The Review of Metaphysics

Founded in 1947, the Review of Metaphysics is a quarterly journal published by the Philosophy Education Society of the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Its subject matter covers trade, technical and professional publications; philosophy; indexes, abstracts, reports, proceedings and bibliographies. Kenneth Rolling is the managing editor, Dr. Jude P. Dougherty is the editor and Justin West is the book review editor.

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Articles from Vol. 61, No. 1, September

Wisdom and Action Guidance in the Agent-Based Virtue Ethics of Aristotle, THOMAS SHERMAN, S.J. While Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics does not provide a guide for action in the form of rules for a decision process as deontological or consequentialist...

Aquinas on the Function of Moral Virtue, JEFFREY HAUSE Aquinas is quite clear about the definition of moral virtue and its effects, but he devotes little space to its function: How does it accomplish what it accomplishes? Aquinas's treatment of...

Pictorial Realism, CATHARINE ABELL In this paper the author proposes a number of criteria for the adequacy of an account of pictorial realism. Such an account must: explain the epistemic significance of realistic pictures; explain why accuracy and...

DARWIN WAS NOT A PHILOSOPHER. He can be fairly called a "philosophical naturalist," an expression that he favors when referring to the most thoughtful of his colleagues. (1) But insofar as his thought is grounded in the philosophic tradition, Darwin...

THIS PAPER ADDRESSES A READING OF HEGEL'S METAPHYSICS made by Tom Rockmore in Hegel, Idealism, and Analytic Philosophy, (1) and in doing so offers an alternative. As Rockmore's argument aims to present Hegel in a way relevant to contemporary philosophical...

J.G. HERDER WROTE in 1799 a lengthy and stridently polemical work attacking Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. This work, entitled A Metacritique of the Critique of Pure Reason, complains, among other things, that "to make oneself independent of oneself,...

Albert Camus on Human, Nature and the Problem of Evil: Elements of a Post-metaphysical and Post-secular Ethics and Politics?, GREGORY HOSKINS In this paper, Hoskin's thesis is that Albert Camus offers key elements of a viable non metaphysical, post-secular...

Gassendi and Kant on Existence, WILLIAM FORGIE In rejecting Descartes's ontological proof for the existence of God, Gassendi maintained that existence is not a property and Kant said that it is not a "real predicate." It is commonly supposed that...

Did Wittgenstein Speak with the Vulgar or Think with the Learned? Or Did He do Both?, JOHN W. COOK Wittgenstein has often been criticized, and even dismissed, for being a patron of ordinary language, a champion of the vernacular, a defender of the...

Aristotle on the Existential Import of Propositions, MARIO MIGNUCCI Actuality, Potentiality and De Anima II.5, ROBERT HEINAMAN Burnyeat has argued that in De Anima II.5 Aristotle marks out a refined kind of alteration which is to be distinguished...

How Sexist Is Aristotle's Developmental Biology?, DEVIN M. HENRY The aim of this paper is to evaluate the level of gender bias in Aristotle's Generation of Animals while exercising due care in the analysis of its arguments. The author argues that...

Brentano and the Buck-Passers, SVEN DANIELSSON and JONAS OLSON According to T. M. Scanlon's "buck-passing" analysis of value, x is good means that x has properties that provide reasons to take up positive attitudes vis-a-vis x. Some authors have...

Richard Rorty was born in New York on October 4, 1931 and died on June 8, 2007 in Palo Alto. He was the son of James and Winifred Rorty. His maternal grandfather was the famous Social Gospel Theologian, Walter Rauschenbush. According to his account...

The Objective Attitudei, TAMLER SOMMERS In this paper, the author aims to alleviate the pessimism with which some philosophers regard the 'objective attitude,' thereby removing a particular obstacle which P. F. Strawson and others have placed in...

IT WAS IN A SEARCH FOR ULTIMATES (archai) that Aristotle thought human curiosity found its highest object: Our thirst for answers would find the understanding we naturally seek when the mind had struck the most universal themes running through the...

IN SUMMA THEOLOGIAE I-II, Q. 46, A. 2, Aquinas argues that the object of anger is double, consisting of something bad, namely the offender, and something good, namely the just retribution to be exacted. The argument is an important element in his account...